


Loshol

by squirenonny



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: 31 Days of Sadfic, CFSWF, M/M, Mild torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 08:29:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4472402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirenonny/pseuds/squirenonny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"They'll take it from me, Syl. They'll find a way to take <i>you</i> from me."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loshol

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kogiopsis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kogiopsis/gifts).



**17 Days**

  
_Makam_  
Death

“Are you all right?”

Renarin curled in on himself, wrapped in emptiness, a new hole in his being that stole his breath and blurred his vision.

“Prince Renarin?”

It hurt. Oh, storms, it _hurt_.

“You’re okay, Renarin. I’m here.”

A shuddering breath. Renarin forced his eyes open. On the ground between his feet was a single glyph, _Makam_. Death. He held a broken stick of charcoal in his hand, the inky dust tracing the creases around his fingernails.

Where had that come from?

“One of the clerks left that behind. I hope you don't mind--you looked like you were ready to scratch that glyph out with your own fingernails.”

Renarin let the broken pieces fall and looked up at Kaladin, who crouched beside him, scowling at the door. The conference room was empty now, all of Dalinar’s officers and scribes nowhere to be seen.

Kaladin glanced his way, his expression softening. “That wasn’t a seizure.”

The implications suddenly caught up with Renarin. The charcoal. The glyph. The vision— _had_ it been a vision? He’d seen nothing this time, nothing but emptiness and sparks of pain like starspren darting behind his eyes.

None of that mattered now. Kaladin _knew_.

Renarin’s legs, still weak from the vision, or whatever it had been, propelled him back, half-risen, half scuttling like a cremling, until his back hit the wall and he fell, heart in his throat.

For one instant, Kaladin reached out toward him as though he might give chase. Then he let his hand drop and went to his knees a body’s length from Renarin.

“Don’t worry,” Kaladin said. “No one else saw, and I won’t talk.”

Renarin’s breath stuttered.

Smiling, Kaladin dropped his gaze to the floor. His fingers hovered over the glyph Renarin had drawn there. Renarin tried not to cringe.

“This countdown doesn’t match the other.”

He sounded surprised, and Renarin almost laughed. Of course the countdowns didn’t match. The other visions were dark and terrible, but this was a sharper, deeper, and more overwhelming pain.

Kaladin gave no sign of what he thought about all this. About Renarin’s visions, about the way he’d hidden it. He wasn’t running away, or calling Renarin a Voidbringer, which was a good sign. Maybe. It was hard to tell with some people—especially Kaladin.

“Is it…” Kaladin paused, then shook his head with a chuckle.

Renarin licked his lips and forced his thoughts into line. “What?”

“I was going to ask if your visions are much like your father's, but considering how little I know about your father’s visions, I don’t suppose there’s much point in asking.”

“Oh.” Renarin studied Kaladin a moment longer, then let himself relax. Captain Kaladin wouldn’t hurt him; Renarin was sure of that much. He didn’t even seem all that bothered by the visions, now that he knew someone hadn’t sneaked past his guards. “They’re not much the same.”

Kaladin shifted off his knees and sat cross-legged, his spear across his lap, his eyes intent on Renarin.

Renarin dropped his gaze. Glys emerged from wherever he’d hidden himself and danced a pattern of light across the floor.

“Father’s visions come from the Almighty,” Renarin said. “Mine don’t.”

“Where do they come from, then?”

The words stuck, for a moment, in Renarin’s throat. “I see the future. That is of the Voidbringers.”

Kaladin made a small, harsh noise that drew Renarin’s eye to him. His brow was furrowed, his lips turned down into a scowl, but he smiled when he saw Renarin looking.

“What is it?”

Kaladin sighed. “We blame a lot of things on the Voidbringers. Bad luck, anger, droughts and storm damage. Some people even accuse surgeons of using Voidbringer magic, just because they don’t understand what it is we do. I won’t say your visions _aren’t_ of the Voidbringers—maybe they are; maybe you know something I don’t. But you’ll understand if I’m skeptical.”

The words soothed away the last of the storm raging inside him. For weeks, Renarin had imagined every awful thing that could happen, all the ways people might turn on him if they knew.

Kaladin had done none of that.

Part of Renarin wanted to leave it there, where it was safe and certain, to stop now knowing that Kaladin did not hate him. Part of Renarin wanted to keep the rest to himself, not because it was easier that way but because it was harder, and because confessing the rest would be so easy Renarin could not see how it could end well.

The rest of him just wanted someone else to _know_.

“Maybe the visions aren’t of the Voidbringers directly,” Renarin said slowly, fighting himself and testing the words. “But they are of the Lost Radiants, and they’re practically the same thing.”

For the first time, Kaladin’s composure actually faltered. He’d been studying the glyph again, but at Renarin’s words his head snapped up, his lips parting. Wide brown eyes stared into Renarin’s, ran him through, pinned him to the wall. There was shock in that look, but also—awe?—and Renarin could not look away.

“The Radiants aren’t Voidbringers, Renarin. We’re something else entirely.”

It took a moment, until Renarin had dragged his eyes away from Kaladin’s, for the words to sink in.

Then he sucked in a breath—and with it, a tiny wisp of Stormlight, and stared at Kaladin’s hands. “We?”

* * *

In retrospect, Kaladin was glad he hadn’t forced himself to guard Dalinar or the king today. Not only because he was still angry over spending the last three weeks in a cell, and so the shift would have been a special kind of torture. Avoiding that was reason enough on its own, but after this conversation with Renarin…

“I can’t believe he’s a Radiant,” he whispered to Syl as he walked back to Bridge Four’s barracks after his shift. _No, it’s not that._ Renarin was exactly the sort of person Kaladin would have chosen to be a Radiant.

He just hadn’t quite believed that the universe could be that fair.

A cluster of blue leaves tumbled overhead, then suddenly reversed course and gathered on Kaladin’s shoulder. Syl resumed her human form and giggled. It had been a while since Kaladin had seen her so happy.

“I told you,” she said, hands on her hips but not quite managing to look smug. “You aren’t supposed to do this alone.”

“Yeah…” Kaladin twisted to look back towards the palace. Dalinar was up to something, something that had kept Renarin busy running reports all day. He probably wouldn’t return to Bridge Four’s barracks tonight. “I’m glad it was him.”

Syl had a mischievous grin on her face that almost, _almost_ made Kaladin take it back, except that—much to Kaladin’s surprise—he actually meant it. If there was any lighteyes Kaladin could picture beside him as a fellow Radiant, it was Prince Renarin. He wondered if Renarin would be comfortable telling Bridge Four.

Idle thoughts, but Renarin was as scared as Kaladin to tell the other lighteyes he was a Radiant. It might be good for him to have somewhere he didn’t have to pretend.

“So…” Syl floated in front of Kaladin’s nose, moving with him and staring him dead in the eye. “That wasn’t so bad. Telling someone.” She studied her fingernails—no doubt mimicking someone she’d seen in the camps, except that Syl actually looked intrigued by what she saw. At least until Kaladin snorted and she dropped her hand to glare at him. “I can’t help but notice he didn’t find a way to take me away.”

“Can we not talk about this, Syl?”

“No! Kaladin, you’re scaring me. You won’t tell Dalinar, and now you—now you promised Moash—”

"Can you blame me?"

A flash of pain darkened her face, and she retreated to the sky as a stream of silver mist.

Kaladin stopped walking, swearing. “Syl,” he hissed. “Sylphrena! I'm sorry, alright? Syl?”

She didn’t come back, and Kaladin sighed. He couldn’t honestly say it wasn’t his own fault. It had all seemed so clear two days ago. Elhokar was an incompetent, irrational king. He needed to be removed so Dalinar could take the throne. Kaladin had been so certain of that he was even willing to face execution to see it done.

Now…

_What will happen to Renarin if you die?_

The thought snuck up on him, spreading heat through his face. What did Renarin have to do with anything? He wasn’t the one Moash’s friends wanted. He wouldn’t be hurt, or exposed, or accused of anything. He’d just be—

Alone.

He’d only just found someone to confide in, in Kaladin, and if Moash’s friends went through with their plan, if Kaladin helped, Renarin would once more be the only Radiant, scared and confused, trying to find his own way knowing that the one who promised that Radiants weren’t evil had gone on to kill his cousin.

Kaladin was surprised how much the notion hurt. A dull hurt, lodged behind his sternum, throbbing in time with his heart. He’d steeled himself against Dalinar’s disappointment, but Renarin’s pain might just crush him.

A sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, rose in his throat. “You’re right, Syl. Oh, _Stormfather_ , you’re right.”

He couldn’t go through with it. He couldn’t let Moash go through with it. He couldn’t—

Something sharp pricked Kaladin between his shoulder blades. He spun, lowering his spear. It was getting dark, the shadows long. Even a little Stormlight would show. (Would that be so bad? He had a feeling he wouldn't be able to hide what he was for very much longer.)

Three men faced him, one a Shardbearer in Plate Kaladin didn’t recognize. The other two wore masks and carried plain steel swords.

Lighteyes. Of course.

A crunch of gravel behind him, and Kaladin was surrounded. He spared the newcomers a glance: a man with a Shardblade but no Plate, and an archer with his crossbow leveled at Kaladin’s heart.

There was no way he could win this without Stormlight.

Well, then, maybe he’d have to confront Dalinar sooner than he’d thought.

Kaladin breathed in—

The Stormlight didn’t come.

For just a moment, Kaladin froze, his mind spinning as he tried again to take in Stormlight.

Then he moved, bringing the butt of his spear down on the crossbow, backing away as the man with the Blade swung for him. Kaladin dodged the second Shardbearer as well, and closed in on the swordsmen. Thin their numbers, that was the only way. The only chance.

It wasn't much of a chance at all, but they would not kill him without a fight.

As he moved, Kaladin scanned the skies for Syl. Where was she? Was her departure the reason his Stormlight wasn’t working?

“Syl!” he shouted to the night. “Syl, I need you!”

There was no answer, and the men were closing in. Kaladin kept his spear moving, kept searching for a ribbon of light, a tumble of leaves, a tiny glowing storm cloud.

He was alone.

And he was too slow.

He avoided the Blade sweeping for his neck, but something crashed against the back of his head. Lights burst across his vision, the world spun, and Kaladin fell into darkness.

**14 Days**

  
_Ehe_  
Pain

Renarin sat on the edge of his bed, his thumb tracing the glyphpair on the bottom of his box. _Khokh_ and _linil_ , the tower and crown of House Kholin. Better glyphs, more pleasing, than the one scratched into the top of his nightstand.

_Pain._

The vision had once more shown him nothing, nothing but darkness and silence and a vast, aching emptiness inside him.

A highstorm raged outside. Dalinar and Navani sat in their private room to ride out the vision, Adolin and Elhokar paced the main room with the guards from Bridge Four, because even with Kaladin gone no one could think of arguing against his routines.

Renarin knew there was no reason to think this vision had anything to do with Kaladin, but he thought it anyway. No reason beyond the countdown, which matched the other vision, the one he’d had the day Kaladin vanished.

Renarin didn’t understand—no one did, really, but Renarin least of all. Elhokar thought Kaladin had run, had decided he didn’t want to captain Elhokar’s guard any longer. Dalinar did not argue openly, but Renarin saw doubt in his eyes. Adolin _did_ argue, insisted that something was wrong, that Kaladin was in trouble.

And Renarin—Renarin _knew_ something was wrong, for why would Kaladin leave just hours after talking with Renarin about their way forward as Radiants? And he knew, and he feared, that whatever trouble could stop a Radiant was more than anyone suspected.

He thought, maybe, he should say something. Confess to being a Radiant, break Kaladin’s confidence so the others knew how serious this was.

But he wasn’t comfortable revealing Kaladin’s secret, and he wasn’t brave enough to reveal his own without Kaladin there beside him.

So he sat in silence, staring at the glyph on his endtable, and reached out a hand. The table was wood—long dead and more deeply asleep than most plants, but Renarin could sense its life. A little Stormlight roused it enough to smooth over the gouges Renarin had carved.

* * *

Pain, and darkness.

Kaladin saw nothing, not even the ceiling of his cell—a small cell, and deep, the weight the earth pressing down on him, squeezing sweat from his pores. He lay on a hard, narrow mat on a stone floor and had only to roll onto his side to touch the walls.

A chain circled his ankle, bound him to the floor.

He thought there was a door in the wall by his head, but it had not opened since Kaladin had woken up, his head pounding, his muscles stiff. He still wore his uniform, though his spheres and his weapons and his medicines had been stripped away. A pitcher of stale water and a chipped wooden cup sat in the corner; he’d had no food in—how long? He’d slept once since waking, but there was no other way to tell time in this place.

Another cell. Another chain. Kaladin’s fingers brushed the scars on his forehead, and he laughed to keep the tears at bay.

He had not seen Syl since the attack.

**5 Days**

  
_Kilik_  
Broken

Days passed with no clues, no message, not even a single reliable whisper of what had happened. Renarin’s sightless visions continued, full of pain and fear and a claustrophobic darkness tinged red with blood, with helpless rage, with fire.

Full of ragged edges that made it hard to pick himself up again once they’d ended.

Renarin had known solitude, both the peace and restfulness of private hours and the cold ache of isolation in a world of warriors and politicians. This…this was worse. Wherever Kaladin was—Renarin no longer bothered to dance around the fact that these visions had something to do with Kaladin—wherever he was, he had no one and nothing at all.

Life in the warcamps continued on, hardly disrupted by the disappearance of one darkeyed man who had been a slave not all that long ago.

Inside the palace, however, the war seemed a distant rumble compared to the highstorm of Kaladin’s abduction. (It had to have been abduction; no one had argued otherwise in almost a week.)

Today, like most days, Adolin had taken half a dozen bridgemen and gone to scour the camps, searching for any sign that might point them to Kaladin. Elhokar wavered between fearful insistence that Kaladin had left because of _him_ and a fragile hope that Kaladin would free himself from his captors and return soon.

“Either way, there’s no need for _us_ to lose our heads over this,” he muttered, pouring himself a second glass of wine.

Renarin wondered if his cousin really thought no one had noticed he’d stopped taking audience with anyone who didn’t have word of the Captain of his guard.

Part of Renarin knew he should tell the others about his visions. They had noticed, certainly, that the glyphs on the walls no longer counted down to the disaster Renarin had seen in the middle of the Weeping, and the change confused them, distracted them from Kaladin. If Renarin had seen anything at all useful in his visions, he might have found the courage to speak up.

Instead he remained silent.

Adolin returned like a thunderclap, the crack of the door against the wall enough to tell Renarin that his search had been fruitless, just like every day before. The bridgemen trailing after him wore mixed expressions of frustration and despair.

Dalinar stood, shoulders tight with the effort of holding himself together. “Anything at all?”

“Nothing! It’s like the storming bridgeboy up and flew away.”

Teft and Sigzil traded glances, too fleeting to be noticed beside Adolin’s broad, frustrated gesticulation. Renarin saw, though, and the reminder of Kaladin’s Surges tightened the fear around his heart. It should have comforted him, knowing that Kaladin was stronger than anyone else the kidnappers might have taken.

It should have, but Renarin was almost certain that Kaladin had been targeted _because_ he was Radiant, and that his captors had planned for it.

Dalinar and Adolin continued to talk, Dalinar’s voice going low as Adolin’s ratcheted louder and louder. Renarin let himself out onto the balcony and shut the door behind him. Shut out the shouts and the tension and the fear.

One of the old Cobalt Guard stood watch beside the door, but he retreated far enough to leave Renarin with some privacy. Grateful beyond words, Renarin crossed his arms on the railing—the same railing that had nearly killed Elhokar, now repaired. He wasn’t scared of another collapse. Even if by some slim chance the assassins tried that again, Renarin had Stormlight. He would probably survive the fall.

And that would take the question of whether to tell his family out of his hands.

A windspren streamed toward him as a wisp of silvery mist, incongruous in the afternoon sun, and circled twice around his head.

It settled on his hand in the form of a young girl, all blue-white, in a dress that turned to mist below her knees. “Renarin!”

Renarin stared at the windspren—no. Kaladin had told Renarin about his spren, though she hadn’t showed herself to Renarin at the time. Not a windspren, but an honorspren.

“Syl?”

She nodded, sniffled, and wiped at her eyes. She could cry…? No, that didn’t matter now.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Kaladin. He’s—he’s—” Syl wrapped her arms around herself, her whole form shivering. “It hurts.”

Renarin’s heart stopped, and his breathing with it. “He’s _dead_?”

Syl shook her head. “They’re doing things. They’re hurting him.” She curled in on herself, her light dimming. “I should be there, but I…I couldn’t find him at first. They took him when I wasn’t there, and now he’s hurting, and it’s all my fault!”

“No.” Renarin cupped his hands around her, searching for the right words. He’d never been good at this, and now the fear for Kaladin made it hard to find any words at all. “Do you know where he is?”

Sylphrena hesitated, then nodded. “I found him last night. I should have stayed, but I had to tell someone and I—I need to go back.” She’d turned back into a mist and was halfway gone before Renarin knew what was happening.

“Wait!” he called. The guard gave a start, but Renarin ignored him. “Can you show me where he is?”

Syl turned back into a girl, hovering in midair, her face twisted in anguish. “He needs me, Renarin. I can’t…I’ve been gone too long already.”

“Glys! Take Glys with you. He can show me.”

Glys, who had been watching silently from the shadows, drifted forward. Syl stared at him for a moment, then managed a small smile.

Neither spren spoke, but they sped off together, a ribbon of mist and a glint like sunlight reflecting off metal. Renarin blinked against the glare, and they were gone.

Now, it was his turn.

* * *

Kaladin hurt.

How long? How long had he been here in this lightless prison? How long since he’d seen sunlight, felt the wind on his face? How long since he’d lost Syl?

Syl…

They knew about Syl. The men and women in white coats with blank faces and lips pressed together in silence. The cold hands hard like Shardplate, who dragged Kaladin from his cell, who poked and prodded him, who locked fabrials in place around his wrist, around his neck, over his heart, over his eyes. Then men and women who chained him to the floor and cut him with sterile blades and brought Stormlight in to watch him heal.

The faceless voices—some, perhaps, belonging to the cold, hard hands, but never when Kaladin could see. The voices that told him to survive as they pumped poison into his cell, as the hands shoved him into a cage with a whitespine, as archers unleashed a rain of death from slits high on the walls, beyond which the voices watched.

They gave him Stormlight when they wanted him to survive, but never enough, and never weapons, and it always came with a shriveled creature like a winged silver cremling that stole the Light before he was taken back to his cell.

They knew he was Radiant, they knew what he could do, they knew about Syl and seemed frustrated that she hadn’t shown herself.

For that reason alone, Kaladin was glad she wasn’t there. He missed her, _storms_ he missed her so much his bones ached, but he feared what they would do if they found her.

They knew, also, that he wasn’t alone. Some days they didn’t test him, didn’t make him bleed. Some days they gave him hot stew and cool water and concicshell mucus to numb the aches left over from their tests, and they asked him,

“Where are the others?”

After the first time, Kaladin refused their kindnesses. The crem-filled water they pushed into his cell every morning did nothing for his hunger pains, but when the questions came he pushed the stew away and poured the clean water out on the floor and threw the vial of conicshell mucus against the wall. The aches were good. The aches reminded him why he had to fight.

He gave them no answers. Not when they asked for names, and not when they asked for things that sounded harmless, like what his favorite food was, or how he’d come to join the army, or whether he’d heard of things like the Ancient of Stone or the Unmade.

With as much as they already knew, anything Kaladin said, any reaction he gave, might tip them off, and he would not betray Renarin.

He gave in to the wretch.

It was easy, between the pain and the darkness and the cramped cell he returned to each night— _each_ night? Sometimes it seemed they kept him awake for days with their tests and their questions, just to see if he would break.

He stood at the lip of the chasms, waiting for his captors to push him over the edge. He felt nothing, and so betrayed nothing when they asked him about Dalinar and Adolin and Renarin and Shallan. He cared nothing for his own survival, so their threats and promises stirred no urged to cooperate.

And yet when they told him to survive he obeyed. When they gave him Stormlight he could not help but take it in. His existence was reduced to alternating period of dark, hollow pain and bright, raging Light that held him back from the chasm with the thin hope that someone might be looking for him.

They needed him still, didn’t they?

So he would survive as long as he could, in the hope that there was something still waiting for him beyond the darkness.

Syl returned in the night, a grim smile and a wavering light that stole a sob from Kaladin’s throat before he remembered that he wasn’t supposed to care.

**3 Days**

  
_Oidio_  
Captivity

They looked at Renarin differently now. Adolin, Dalinar, Navani. Even Elhokar seemed at once awed and frightened by Renarin, the Radiant. They looked at him sometimes as a stranger, sometimes a hero, and Renarin would have been flattered by the respect in their eyes if he hadn’t felt so unworthy.

Two days had passed since Syl came to him, and Renarin had spent most of it with Bridge Four. They, too, looked at him as something more than human, but mostly they just talked with him about Kaladin, about what he had done for them, about anything at all that would pass the time as they waited for Glys to return.

He did, at last, while Renarin was in the midst of another vision, the first in more than a week, the first that showed him more than a haze of red like sunlight through closed eyelids.

The red was still there, the stain of blood, the taint of pain, and through it Renarin finally saw Kaladin, lying bloodied on the floor. Mangled fabrials surrounded him and tears chased clean streaks down his dirty face.

His hand stretched out toward Renarin, his face frozen in a silent scream.

Renarin woke to Glys glowing faint across the back of his hand, a crystalline pattern like light through a cut gem. Glyphs covered the floor around him, first etched with his side knife, which lay in pieces around him, then written in Renarin’s own blood.

_Oidio_. Captivity.

_Hakhah_. Isolation.

And _loshol_ , which Renarin dared not let himself think about.

It was the dead of night, but Renarin dressed himself and went to find his father.

Kaladin had been found, and there was no time to waste.

* * *

He had two days with Syl. Two short, pain-filled days with her smile and her promises that Renarin was coming, that it would soon be over.

Two days before his captors noticed her and stole her from him.

Even now, an hour later as Kaladin wept in his cell, too exhausted even for sleep, he didn’t know how they’d found her. He had taken care not to speak to her outside his cell, to not even so much as look at her.

They found her anyway, while he was chained to the ground and collared with a fabrial that glowed with multihued light. They found her, and they snatched up a fabrial that had sat untouched from the first day, and two of the men pinned Kaladin down, wrestled the Light-drinking cremling onto his arm, and listened to him rage as Syl screamed in terror.

When it was finished they held a dimly-glowing garnet. It hummed with a tone beyond hearing, with anguish beyond words that resonated in Kaladin’s chest.

**1 Day**

  
_Hakhah_  
Alone

After two days of inaction, Renarin could no longer make himself wait.

Dalinar said they couldn’t rush. Two days to watch the drab, Soulcast building beyond the outer markets, two days of picking out guards and traps and entrances, observing a routine. That still left them tomorrow, the final day of the countdown, to act.

Dalinar said moving without as much information as possible was more likely to doom them than waiting. He said Renarin’s vision wouldn’t come true until tomorrow, so they had no reason to panic yet.

It wasn’t Dalinar’s fault he didn’t know better; Renarin had made sure no one else knew. No one else but him.

Even so, he couldn’t wait. Adolin and Father would execute their perfect, strategic rescue, and maybe they would even succeed.

Renarin could not wait. The glyphs from his last vision floated at the edge of his sight, taunting him. _Loshol_ , it whispered. _Loshol._

He wasn’t surprised he was caught sneaking out of the palace with his guards and a purse full of spheres. What surprised him was that it was Elhokar who caught him—and that Elhokar, clad in Shardplate, his fist opening and closing at his side, asked only to come along.

“Uncle has already said he won’t take me tomorrow,” Elhokar said, glancing furtively over his shoulder. Storms, he looked more nervous about this than Renarin. “He says I can’t risk my life like that.”

“And that surprises you?” asked Moash, his voice little more than a growl in the back of his throat. He had insisted on guarding Renarin tonight so he could come with him to try to rescue Kaladin, and Renarin had been glad for the offer. With a full Shardbearer, his plan might actually work.

Two Shardbearers now, it seemed.

Elhokar flushed, but met Moash’s eyes steadily. “It doesn’t surprise me. I just disagree.”

“Why?” Renarin asked. “I’m not complaining, but…why?”

Elhokar hesitated, looking around at the bridgemen watching him. At Moash and Teft, who had assigned themselves to Renarin tonight, and Rock and Lopen because they would not be missed tomorrow when Dalinar began his attack. At Skar and Mart, who had come with Elhokar himself—surprised, but pleased that they would be going after their Captain.

“Why?” Swallowing, Plate clinking as he bunched his hands into fists, Elhokar stared them all down. “Because Alethkar needs that bridgeman more than it needs me.”

* * *

They controlled his bond.

It took Kaladin until the next day to realize it, but when he did it broke him all over again. The ache in his heart. The distant screaming in his head. The garnet at the center of a fabrial that pulsed in time with his heartbeat.

He’d known they would find a way to take her from him. He just hadn’t realized how completely.

“Fabrials are powered by spren contained inside gemstones,” said one of the voices.The room blazed with Stormlight—more than Kaladin had seen since coming here, so much his eyes stung. They’d kept bringing more, kept cutting him deeper until he lay in a pool of his own blood, but still he could not take the Stormlight in.

“This fact is the foundation of all fabrial science.”

The voice sounded fuzzy and distant, difficult to care about beyond the ringing in his ears and the spinning in his head.

“We designed this one after studying the process by which Shardbearers bond their Blades.”

Cold fingers lifted his arm. Cold metal encircled his wrist. Another fabrial. He couldn’t bring himself to care.

Until he breathed in, and Stormlight flooded his senses. His wounds knit back together, his head cleared, his strength returned.

_Kaladin!_

Syl’s voice. Kaladin’s eyes snapped open, but she wasn’t there.

_Kaladin, please! You have to—_

They took the fabrial away. Syl’s voice and the Stormlight went with it, fading with a shriek of agony.

The fabrial.

The garnet.

It took him until one of the white-coated artifabrians donned the fabrial herself to put the pieces together. She breathed in, and glowed faintly blue with Stormlight.

They’d taken Syl.

They’d imprisoned her.

They’d taken her bond, and the strength it provided, and twisted it to their own ends.

And Kaladin was powerless to stop them.

**0 Days**

  
_Loshol_  
Too Late

Midnight came and went while Renarin searched. There had been too many defenses, too many traps. Even with Dalinar’s scouts, they hadn’t known about everything, and the delay had bled their last safe hours dry.

Now it was the final day, and _loshol, loshol, loshol_ sang in Renarin’s ears.

_Too late. You’re too late._

He shoved the panic down and kept running, blazing with Stormlight, Shardblade screaming in his mind as he cut through locks to peer into every dark, empty room.

They’d split into three groups after midnight, after cutting their way into the building. After Renarin with his fumbling Surges healed a gash across Mart’s back. After Moash took Skar and Lopen aside and told them to keep Elhokar alive.

Rock and Teft came with Renarin to the back of the building, into a cellar hidden beneath a storeroom.

They found him in a cell down there, away from the sunlight, away from the sky. Kaladin sat up, his face gaunt and shadowed in the glow of Renarin’s Light.

“No,” he whispered, eyes wide, hands shaking. “No! What are you doing here? _You need to go_!”

“Not without you, lad,” Teft said, kneeling beside Kaladin. Rock crouched on his other side. Renarin, shifting from foot to foot and trying to ignore the mantra of _loshol_ in his mind, held out his purse full of infused spheres.

Kaladin stared at it for a long moment, and then a single laugh slipped out, a broken, watery sound on the edge of despair.

“I can’t.”

* * *

They went deeper, even though Kaladin’s mind was screaming that they had to get out. Not for his own sake, but for Renarin’s. These people had stolen Syl from him, and Kaladin would sooner die than let them take Glys.

But Renarin wouldn’t run. He and Rock and Teft all agreed—if Syl was still in danger here, they would not leave until she was safe. Kaladin would have argued more, except that his soul _ached_ at the thought of leaving her behind.

He knew, from the moment they entered the lab with the floor still stained an ugly rust color with Kaladin’s blood.

He was too late.

Two artifabrians were there, one glowing with Stormlight. They took one look at Kaladin, still covered in blood and grime and dried sweat, though Renarin had healed his lingering wounds; at Renarin, blazing like the sun; at Teft, a fair match in that moment for the Blackthorn; at Rock—at Rock, who held a spear already tipped with red.

(Kaladin had apologized as they ran. He didn’t know what else to do. Rock had looked at the spear and then at Kaladin, and had somehow managed a smile. “Airsick lowlander,” he’d said, his voice tight and his hands sure on his spear. “You are not the one who should be sorry.”)

“Mishal! Do it!”

The artifabrian glowing with stolen Light fumbled with her fabrial. For just a moment, Kaladin thought she was going to try to fight them.

Then her glow faded as she slipped the fabrial off her wrist. Kaladin didn’t have time to do anything but cry out in horror as the artifabrian dropped the fabrial on the countertop behind her and set a diamond-tipped chisel against the garnet. Kaladin sprinted forward as she reached for a mallet, but the other artifabrian caught him and threw him back.

“I’m sorry.” The man almost managed to sound sincere.

The mallet came down, the garnet shattered. And Kaladin screamed.

Storms. Oh, _Stormfather!_ He’d thought they’d already taken her away, but he’d been _wrong_ , and now—and now—

There was a hole inside him, a chasm where Syl had been, only now she was gone and he was alone.

He watched, rooted in place, as the others charged past him, incapacitating the artifabrians, then turning to face the guards that poured in through the far door. Kaladin’s limbs felt heavy, his body foreign. This was not, could not be real. It was a nightmare, and Kaladin was trapped. Broken, shattered like the sparkling fragments of the garnet that dusted the floor with constellations in the stain of Kaladin’s blood.

The room was silent, and Kaladin could not remember how long it had been so. He knelt on the floor, Renarin’s hand on his shoulder, but all Kaladin could feel was the agony burning in his veins, the frayed ends of his bond carving new scars into his heart.

_You can't be dead, Syl. I still need you._

But she was. Her death rang in his bones, in his head.

“I told you,” Kaladin whispered, pressing shaking hands to the floor, feeling the bits of gem dig into his palms. _They’ll take it from me, Syl. They’ll find a way to take_ you _from me._

He wished he hadn't been right.


End file.
